Contraband Alanis photoSo there I was: 20 rows back along the left aisle of the classic Moore Theatre in Belltown. Poised. Ready to experience…Alanis. I was in a weird place. We (my wife – a big time Alanis-head – and I) had just witnessed a man named MC Souleye (rapper, reported tiger enthusiast, and – most importantly – husband to Alanis) bounce around the well-lit stage, and rap to full room of nineties alt-pop fans. People, namely myself, sat limply in their seat in some kind of tequila daze, making mundane small talk about the usher’s mustache and the room’s decor, occasionally cracking a joke about the opener’s outmoded style and forced rap dancing until they finally gave in to boredom and and wandered down stairs to satisfy their growing agave deficiencies.When we returned to our seats after dude’s set, we were able to take in the crowd since the lights had been turned up. To our right, Stranger columnist Anna Minard (hi Anna!) rightly pointed out that there was an abundance of “mom cleavage” (and not just my wife’s!) present. The show was all ages, but I think you would have been hard-pressed to find a soul under twenty-one/twenty-five/thirty; we were pretty much all of the Alanis Generation (as I’m sure we’ll be referred to in coming years), and as soon as Ms. Morissette took the stage, there was rampant dancing like it was ’95. About that dancing: shit was wild. There were a number of people dancing in the aisle, craning their necks to get a better look at Alanis stomping around the stage in a big ol’ pair of knee-high boots. There was this middle-aged lady infront of us throwing up the W – which made little sense, but I was on board. Everybody was having a great time, whether it was because they loved Alanis back in the day, had just bought her new album, or were there for the sheer novelty of it with their date – and that’s exactly why the Alanis Experience is still so successful today: concerts are a low-risk venture for the artist, because there is basically nobody left to win over; everybody in the crowd already knows what they’re getting themselves into.Woman throwing up “the W”With that said, as an “impartial” observer, there was a certain cheese factor to it all: she marched in basically the same V pattern across the stage and back all night, executed some pre-planned-looking retro hair-swings, looked like she was holding her guitar (many different, sparkly guitars, actually) just for show much of the time, and kind of did that Ricky Bobby thing with her hands when she wasn’t holding the mic; but the crowd loved it. She played ALL the hits. “You Oughta Know” and “Ironic” were, of course in the mix. “Celebrity” – a new favorite – was thrown in for good measure. By the time she came back out for her second encore, people looked rather exhausted, and made a beeline for the door once she finished, but I didn’t see too many disappointed faces on the way out (AND I WAS LOOKING).